Collection: Old Sheffield Plate & Silver Plate

Old Sheffield Plate, or fused plate as it is sometimes known, was the first commercially viable method of plating metal. The method itself was invented by a Sheffield cutler named Thomas Boulsover in 1743. Boulsover discovered that when applying sufficient heat to silver and copper the two metals fused. This, in effect, meant that the two metals acted as a single one, and when worked or hammered out the proportions of silver to copper remained the same. The technique Boulsover developed was to sandwich an ingot of copper between two plates of silver, tightly bind it with wire, heat it in a furnace and then mill it out in to sheet, from which objects could be made.